The bathroom was how Nicole had left it. Obviously. The blanket now drooped, pooling with blood. Impermeable to the death underneath it.

  Nicole took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. She was smeared with red, staining her. It likely would not come out until she could access a repair pod. There was something about blood that clung to you. Nicole didn’t have the heart to even try to wash it away.

  She looked like the real thing, but she did not taste like it. Tired and weary. How was that possible? She wiped lubricant from her nose.

  Turning back to the body, she knelt beside it and removed the blanket from the face. It had the nerve to look like Elsy, that very fact the only thing preventing her from bringing her fists down, from destroying it.

  So eerily still, no pulse, no breath, none of the millions of micromovement biologicals were constantly wracked by. Nicole had to lock the body away in the airlock, a horrid thing to do to Elsy, but something that would preserve her likeness.

  More water leaked from her eyes. She would have chalked it up to a need to empty her tank if not for the simulated pain. Yet, all pain was simulated, was it not? That didn’t stop it from hurting.

  Nicole reached out, putting a hand on Elsy’s chest. Not Elsy’s chest, this was nothing but a body now. Elsy had taken its life with her, leaving it a nothing thing to fade away.

  So cool against her fingers, once it had been warm.

  The gods were so fond of cruelty. Perhaps Elsy was simply not worthy of a miracle. Yet the gods must have enjoyed the slaughter; humans did, and were they not made in their image?

  Nicole was getting away from herself. She pulled her hand away. She knew how biologicals grieved, the processes and chemicals, objectively how it all worked, what loss was like and how to cope. But she was a facsimile, and now experiencing it herself…

  For once, she just didn’t know what to do.

  She knelt there for a long time. Every moment was almost the one she would finally do what needed to be done.

  Something moved.

  Nicole frowned. That was not possible. Elsy was gone. The baby could not have survived. If it had, she would wring the life from its miserable little neck herself. She pulled the blanket down further.

  It was not the baby.

  A strange bulge was pressing out from below the body’s ribcage, a large spherical thing. Nicole tore the shirt open, the skin was being pressed, stretched by something inside trying to get out.

  It could not be the baby. The mass wriggled and squirmed like nothing Nicole had ever seen before. It continued, flesh bulging as it slunk into the chest cavity. The corpse exhaled, the thing taking up space where it did not belong.

  Protocol suggested incineration, utter destruction of unknown alien variables which showed any sign of being harmful to biologicals.

  But what was it? How had it gotten there?

  Were she following protocol, this would be doubly a reason to jettison the body into space. She watched with fascination the subtle movements of something strong wriggling beneath flesh. Finally, it squeezed under the sternum and distended the throat. Stretching it to nearly double the width, a horrid sight as the oblong thing wriggled up.

  It was in the throat. The head curled unnaturally back as it wriggled up towards the skull. Nicole watched with fascination, horror, and a stunned confusion utterly unfamiliar to her.

  The lips parted. A tentacle slithered out. Just the tip, several centimetres, but it kept coming. Another tentacle wedged the jaw open further.

  It was slithering free, coated in a clear sticky mucus. Another tentacle suctioned onto the face as it pulled its body free, sliding out of the throat and slipping into the world.

  Nicole stared at the thing. Six tentacled appendages flailed, struggling to support its oblong body. It was a greenish hue of gray, and a large crest descended into some kind of vestigial tail. Its body was around 30 centimetres long, its legs more than doubling that. The head was small and neckless. It lacked a mouth, eyes, and any features at all.

  Just a gray tentacled cephalopodian thing.

  As strange as it was, it was pathetic. Sliding along the corpse, grasping at its surroundings. Either it was blind, or it was stupid, or both. Born into the world helpless.

  It slid from the body, landing with a surprisingly soft consistency. Nicole had the sudden thought that if she wrapped her hand around it and squeezed it might pop.

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  She grabbed it, holding it upside down by several of its legs. It was shockingly light, like a sack of fluid. It reacted quickly to her molestation, tentacles wrapping around her wrist as it tried and failed to lift its own body weight.

  As far as she could tell, it had no mouth, no beak, no orifices at all. The mucus was unnervingly cold and sticky. Why was it sticky? One would have expected mucus to be slippery. It was all tinged red with blood. She hated the texture.

  “What are you?” She asked the thing. It did not react to her voice, still straining against her grip helplessly.

  To biologicals, this would have been a nightmare; a creature of unknown toxicity and danger. But Nicole had no predators; she did not have such fear. She did not know how to be prey.

  After a moment, it managed to find some kind of leverage. Pulling its body up enough to grab onto her with its remaining arms. It was not exactly attacking, or perhaps simply too weak to do any damage.

  It seemed just as curious as Nicole was. Running an arm along hers to reach into her sleeve. It semi-wrapped itself around her hand, something tickling at her palm, the sealed seam of her artificial skin.

  Was it trying to crawl inside her?

  What was this? Some kind of parasite?

  How had it entered Elsy’s body? It was so large. It must have grown incredibly rapidly; they had not been on N7 long.

  Had this thing been what had made her sick? Had this thing killed her?

  Had she been entirely wrong? What an utter failure of a doctor she was. She had been concerned with cancer and pregnancy, all while a parasite had grown and siphoned the life from Elsy.

  Yet did this change anything? What could she have done? She had been without surgical tools or monitoring equipment. She had done all she could have. At the very least, Elsy had died with an answer, a wrong one, but it had seemed to comfort her regardless.

  There was only one problem. If Elsy had been host to this horror, how many more now grew inside the bodies of the colonists? How many would be dead when they returned? It was a chilling thought.

  The parasite had seemingly relaxed. It still held on tightly, yet it had gone semi-limp. Playing dead?

  What strange behaviour. Then it squeezed her hand, releasing the pressure just as fast.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Nicole frowned, bringing the thing closer to investigate what in the world it was doing. Was it injecting her with something? Trying to… eat her? Digest her somehow? What mechanisms did this thing exist by?

  It survived in an atmosphere compatible with humans. Though the shuttle had a lower oxygen concentration than N7. Yet it did not seem to breathe the way humans did. Perhaps it absorbed oxygen? That was assuming it relied on oxygen at all. Nicole truly had no way to know anything about this creature. Perhaps she should simply kill it and be done with it. She had far too much on her mind; this horrid thing changed nothing.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  It started up again, just to stop. The pattern was… rhythmic. It struck her as odd. Somehow, despite her 25 kW hydrogen fuel cell, Nicole didn’t have the energy for this.

  Still, some byte of data bouncing around her consciousness made her hesitate. She was certainly required to report this creature, certainly required to destroy it.

  But it was helpless. Nicole had come to learn she had an odd empathy for helpless creatures.

  And yet, this helpless creature was a killer. A killer of her helpless creature.

  Nicole was torn. Both in marvel and anger.

  Did it understand what it had done? Did it understand that Nicole wanted to tear it limb from limb? To vivisect it until it experienced every ounce of suffering she was now haunted by.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  Squeeze squeeze.

  No, she decided. She doubted it even had the capacity to be malicious.

  Nicole stood, grabbing the first aid kit and emptying the contents. She peeled the creature off her. It flailed, panicked and angry. She dropped it into the plastic container and snapped it closed.

  Perhaps once she had all her equipment from the Euphorion and had learned every piece of information she could, it would make an adequate pet.

  A morbid option. But it had fed upon Elsy’s body, which meant it carried the same proteins and fats that Elsy had. It was made from the same stuff. Keeping it would be keeping a piece of her. Maybe if the creature stayed alive, a piece of Nicole’s friend would too.

  She hid the first aid kit under Elsy’s seat. None of the biologicals would go near it. When she was satisfied that the thing wouldn’t draw attention or cause a fuss, she returned to the bathroom and reminded herself of the task that needed to be accomplished.

  It was not the first time carrying Elsy. She weighed even less, wrapped in the blanket to provide her with the privacy she had so often been denied. Nicole gently set her down in the airlock compartment.

  A trail of blood and fluids had followed them. There was nothing to be done about that; the shuttle would be stained by Elsy’s memory, as it should be.

  Nicole was feeling sentimental. How unlike her. This all made her feel sentimental. Already, the biologicals were trying to move on. Their memories were fading more and more with each passing millisecond until only Nicole would remember.

  Yet the memories already grew distant, slipping through their fingers as their moments sifted further and further away. Their clarity did not stop the growing gap between them.

  Nicole could only watch as her friend slipped away between her fingers again and again, leaving nothing but memories wracked with false hope, knowing what was to come.